Binswanger discusses the moral basis of capitalism

interview

By Joan Abbott

Dr. Harry Binswanger '65 spoke last night on "The Moral Basis of
Capitalism." The talk was sponsored by The Ayn Rand Institute.

Binswanger defended capitalism as the only social system that recognizes
individual rights and outlaws the use of physical force. He reached this
conclusion by arguing that life is an end in itself and requires no other
purpose. Life, in turn, requires the use of man's mind to produce values.
Using force to violate the work of man's mind is a moral violation.
Preventing a man from keeping the values that he has achieved is immoral.
The only system which upholds these rights, property rights, is capitalism.

Binswanger's defense of capitalism was based on Ayn Rand's philosophy,
objectivism. During the question period, Binswanger fielded questions on
environmental regulation, the origins of capitalism and socialism, the
moral basis for manifest destiny, Native Americans, and objectivism vs.
libertarianism.

The following is an interview with Binswanger focusing on his career at
MIT and his views of MIT today.

Q: How did an MIT undergraduate degree prepare you for a professional
career in philosophy?

A: It was fairly good. The courses were interesting and well taught.
The professors were interested in teaching and communicating with the
students. The curriculum was a combination of history of philosophy and
contemporary issues. The professors worked to make their courses
interesting, and they were. Given my position as an objectivist on the
Anglo-American and European philosophic traditions, there is a limit to the
value that I can ascribe to education from contemporary philosophers, but
within those limits, I thought MIT was better than my graduate education at
Columbia. I think that the Institute should retain its identity as a
science and engineering school. I don't think it should try to become an
all-purpose school. On the other hand, I think that a certain amount of
philosophy is good.

Q: The current humanities distribution system at MIT replaced a
four-semester core course on the history of Western ideas. The intent of
this is to give students a broader exposure to humanities and more choice.
Meanwhile, its almost impossible to get the education knowledge that was
taught under the old system. What do you think about the new system?

A: I am upset at the way that the humanities department's curriculum has
disintegrated. The four core courses were universally hated by those going
through it but they provided a history of ideas and a general framework to
understand where we are today. It was in concept a very good course and
even those that hated it are probably glad that they took it.

Unfortunately, here, teaching varied a lot. I had one professor who began
each class by asking, "What interested you in the reading?" They would just
let the students talk the whole time, force them to talk because really
nothing interested them. Some [professors] were good and well-liked and
most were acceptable. The problem was that even then you had the impression
that these professors were not really enthusiastic about what they were
doing. Possibly because the students didn't want to be there. It was
mutually reimbursing. [Students] didn't know how to express themselves in
writing. There was a sort of strained hostility between the teacher and the
classroom which did nothing for class chemistry. The elective courses in
the philosophy department were much better.

Q: Western philosophy courses of the type once taught at MIT have been
seen as discriminatory towards women and minority groups. What do you think
about this?

A: This is a vicious, egalitarian racist idea which is very common
in universities today. It's egalitarian because it tries to ignore the
differences in individuals and it's racist because it looks at things
through racial issues. The qualification for being on the core curriculum
should be the quality of the contribution the person made not what race or
sex they belong to. As an individualist, I say race, gender and all other
such group affiliations are irrelevant. The criteria for selection of a
course and any works to be studied should have nothing to do with the
author, only the work.

Q: A question often raised at MIT is "What is the function of humanities
courses in the education of a scientist or engineer?" What's your opinion?

A: Given contemporary, irrational ideas being presented in the
humanities, I can understand why scientists and engineers would not want to
make them part of their education. In a better intellectual environment,
the need for scientists to gain a broader framework for their professional
and personal lives through the humanities would be evident.

Today, the engineers are under attack by numerous anti-technology groups.
A humanistic education that would arm them with answers to that group would
be extremely valuable. If they could learn why technology is the highest
spiritual function and to understand that they are exponents of man's
creative faculty, not just "number-crunchers," this would give them the
self-confidence to be proud to be engineers and to know that technology is
the solution not the problem.

Q: I understand that you first saw Ayn Rand here at MIT. Tell us
about it.

A: Miss Rand gave a lecture titled "The Objectivist Ethics"
in Kresge in 1962. I had heard that she was a controversial figure but had
not read any of her works so I didn't get a lot out of the talk at first.
Then, Miss Rand came to a point in her presentation where she said, "Man
has a choice to focus his mind or drift in a semiconscious daze." This hit
me like a sonic boom, I leaned forward in my chair and spent the rest of
the lecture struggling to understand what she was saying. I still didn't
get a lot out of it, not that it was a difficult lecture but I was just
unprepared. The question period was astounding. When asked if she was an
atheist, Miss Rand replied, "of course," as if somebody had asked her is
she dressed more warmly in the winter than in the summer -- "of course."

I was somewhat of an agnostic at that point and I thought that maybe
there was some vast cosmic force that is behind the physical laws. When I
heard her say "of course", I heard in my own mind "of course." She went on
to explain that she accepted reason and nothing but reason and that if you
believed in God, you believed in faith. What her "of course" said, besides
the explanation, was that the question "Is there is a God?" is exactly like
the question "Is there a person standing on the corner of Mass Ave. and
Memorial Drive?" It's a factual question that's being answered by the same
method of thinking that you answer any question. And once she posed it that
way, "Is there some disembodied super-consciousness who created all of
reality out of nothingness by means of a wish, is that how the world came
to be? That's ridiculous." That's what I understood her to say.

She also had a heckler from the audience; she was extremely hated at that
time by many people. Most of the audience came to scoff at Miss Rand but
she won the audience over entirely. Particularly, somebody yelled out from
the audience, "Why don't you go back where you came from!" She stopped,
fixed on the audience, and asked, "Do you have the courage to stand up and
repeat that?" A figure stood up in the seat and began to speak but never
got to the end of his sentence. He trailed off and finally slumped down in
his seat. It was so obvious that his statement had no cognitive content,
only a slur because of her Russian accent. The audience burst into laughter
immediately followed by applause for Ayn Rand.

I asked her later about that incident and she didn't even remember it. To
me it was a very exciting moment but to her it was insignificant. She was
only interested in ideas, and it was obvious to her that this heckler had
no ideas and was just mouthing off. This was still at a time when people
did not make extreme statements or do things like that. She was so black
and white and dramatic. It was like coming into the sunlight after having
grown up in Plato's cave. For every question she answered, she was very
absolute and clear. She always gave extensive reasons for her position so
after that I was very impressed, and I thought I had to read Atlas
Shrugged. It took me a month to read because it was so much to
integrate and also, I didn't want it to end.

It wasn't until a year later that I decided I was an objectivist. I gave
it a year because I thought, "This sounds fantastic, this sounds like
everything I have ever felt and thought and, better. It was more thought
out." During the next year, the particular assignment I gave myself was
that whenever I talked to somebody and they disagreed about these ideas, to
find out what their objections were. Maybe there are some obvious flaws
here that I don't see and others know more than I do. Maybe this is just a
beginner stage where you think this is some kind of great philosophy. So, I
talked about ideas a lot and met a wide range of people. I would always ask
them "What's wrong with this, why don't you agree with it? What's the
flaw?" What they would say was not something that I had not seen; it was
some line that Ayn Rand had already addressed in Atlas Shrugged.

I found also that not only did these people have no answer to my
questions but they had not even read the opposition. They knew only a few
slogans like Ayn Rand was "right-wing" and "for selfishness." The
opposition which had made me leery of Ayn Rand turned out to be completely
bankrupt. Meanwhile, I was reading everything I could get my hands on and
at the end of the year I had read literally everything Miss Rand had ever
written. The results were integrated in my mind and I had no further
doubts. I decided I agreed 100 percent with this philosophy. The years
since have only added to the solidity of this.

Q: Were you involved with the Radicals for Capitalism?

A: Yes, I was involved but we gave talks on wide
philosophical topics at a time when there wasn't much literature available
on the objectivist philosophy on some of these topics. It was amateurish
but fun. We had about 25 come to our talks regularly. Actually, we weren't
interested in politics. It was called the Radicals for Capitalism because
there is a line in Ayn Rand's writing which says, "We are radicals for
Capitalism." But we never had any meetings about politics. Politics was
easy. We all understood it right away. We had discussions on topics like
the primacy of existence (even though we didn't have that name for it at
that time), free will vs. determinism, and the aesthetics of music.